What do you do? We design amazing wow-inspired paper for social events, designers, and businesses. With our own in-house design and letterpress shop, we create everything from entirely custom or semi-customizable letterpress invites to stand-out logos, business cards, and websites for businesses.

What is your aesthetic? As a designer, my aesthetic is constantly evolving. Generally, I like a mix of a vintage letterpress texture with a contemporary and modern color palette or font concept.

How does your studio style convey your professional aesthetic? The studio really reflects our ability to translate each client through their paper products since a wide variety of aestethics are represented from a traditional chair with contemporary and unique upholstery, to an industrial chic metal cabinet which displays our limited edition prints.

Overall, the studio is warm and inviting – and really feels like you are coming into our home. It’s familiar but there is always some boundary-pushing element in the room that draws the eye. Clients enjoy the opportunity to get comfortable and share not only their scope of work – but want to share things about themselves and get to know us. The art of building a personal relationship has gotten lost somewhere in this e-commerce/internet/on-demand world and I think our clients value the fact that we want to get to know who they are – not just what they need. That helps us infuse their personalities into the designs we are creating for them.

Favorite part of your studio? A toss up between “The Living Room” where we consult with clients, and the basement where the presses live – there is something really special about a room full of vintage letterpress machines.

Where do you go for inspiration? Architecture, fabrics, the environment, blogs, my son Landon, everyday life really

What tool do you use in your business that you can’t live without? My Mac

Is there anything that would enhance your business? our own laser cutter is next on the list of purchases, it would be amazing to have those capabilities in house to compliment our production

Anything else we should know? In honor of celebrating our 10th year, our new website and branding has been a labor of love we are so excited to finally share it with everyone! I think it really represents us – I especially love the Dollhouse section where you can see the studio and learn about our amazing team of talented designers and staff.

What do you do? We each operate independently but often collaborate and provide full service to wedding and event clients. We also host occasional events and creative workshops.

What is your aesthetic? Fortunately, the four of us have a similar aesthetic and design sensibility. We love a timeless look with vintage and personal touches. You’ll also see little pops of color and modern touches here and there — both in our work and studio..

How does your studio style convey your professional aesthetic? We love understated elegance with a lot of personal touches. And we think that is reflected in our work as well as studio.

Favorite part of your studio? Our meeting room! We love that we have a place to meet clients that showcases our work. And of course we love our farm table and natural sunlight!

Where do you go for inspiration? Everywhere! Magazines, textiles, blogs. We’re constantly looking around us to gather inspiration to inspire us and our clients.

What tool do you use in your business that you can’t live without? We all love our laptops, of course. But one of the favorite areas of our space is craft closet and those are tools we definitely couldn’t live without!

Is there anything you’d upgrade to? We’re fortunate to all have growing businesses – so we wouldn’t mind a little more space!

What do you do? It’s funny because when we are asked ‘what do you do’ we kind of instantly have a dear in the headlights look because it really is very hard to define. Second Story is a co-op of small business owners/artists all of which needed a beautiful space to meet with clients, a group of people who wanted a little something more then fighting for space in the local/loud coffee shop. Second Story Media LLC was founded to give the small business owners of East Tennessee an option. An option in advertising, an option for meeting with clients as well as unique interaction with the community. A place for the women of our community to celebrate the Stor

ies of there lives. Weddings, birth, graduations, those milestones that warrant a celebration. We host inspirational/educational wedding/event workshops, business building classes for our vendors, we help our vendors through lots of cross promotional events, we also run a blog for our vendors and the brides of east tennessee called Wedding Daily Times of East Tennessee!

What is your aesthetic? Clean, soft and inspiring. When designing the studio we wanted lots of whites to really highlight the inspirational pieces as well as the beautiful work of our vendors! Our goal was to create an environment that was very calm and really made the area bride feel excited about her upcoming wedding. We have a few photographers, including myself and I wanted a clean palette for sessions, a home like feel for our clients!

How does your studio style convey your professional aesthetic? We are all about inspiration and connecting the community to amazing vendors, as well as growing the industry in our area. Our studio style is a blank slate with pops of inspiration, ideas and color. Very clean and homey feeling, sitting on a couch and chatting with clients is so comfortable and intimate. Recently a photojournalist visited us to do a shoot for the local newspaper and was loving the space, he came into our back office and said “You know, this is like the ultimate girls clubhouse!” We loved that. Because that is exactly how we want women of our community to feel, like they are in a super creative, happy club that supports them through the process of planning these huge moment in their lives.

Favorite part of your studio? It is very hard to choose, however we truly love our ‘cozy’ little office. Lisa and I [Courtney DeLaura] share our tiny little office with Erin Haines of Be True

Designs and Shanna Jestice of Ruffles & Rouge. It is in that small space we come up with our big dreams, ideas, we blog and design. It is non stop laughter, brainstorming and clicking of the Apple keyboards! I feel so truly blessed to be able to work with these ladies every single day.

Where do you go for inspiration? We all pull inspiration from different places and I think having four creative people sitting in the same little office lends to inspiration on it’s own, we absolutely feed off of each other. Most of my personal inspiration comes when I am listening to amazing music on my i phone driving to work, thank goodness for the voice recording option on that phone, I talk to myself a lot on the way to work. I am able to really clear my head and just let the ideas run wild. When that well runs dry we just grab a cupcake, go out into the front room, sit on the couch and browse through our HUGE collection of magazines. I think we have every single issue of Domino, Blueprint, Martha Stewart Wedding, The Nest, Nylon, Cookie and so many other magazines! Again the Girls Clubhouse is in full effect those days. Cupcakes, coffee, magazines, notebooks and lots of laughing.

What tool do you use in your business that you can’t live without? I think in a word – computers. I am a photographer by trade, Erin a graphic designer, Lisa a photographer and blogger! So needless to say we wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for our computers.

Is there anything you’d upgrade to? As much as we ADORE our location, we have big dreams for expansion. We wouldn’t move from the complex we are in we simply would upgrade to a huge space. However this space is very near and dear to our hearts, we really tore it all down and started from scratch. We didn’t want to bite off more then we could chew, but we foresee in our very near future a much larger space!

Anything else we should know? I think the only other thing I would really want to convey is that in this new economic climate, we all need to think outside the box. We need to really join forces as small business owners, support and nurture those relationships with each other an

d that is Second Story Media’s goal in our local community to foster a place of support for the local artist and small business owner.

What is your aesthetic? It’s a total girl-fest here. Venetian mirrors, robin’s egg blue walls, pink bicycle, papel picados. When getting married, brides have to start melding their interior design styles with their new husbands, so we like the idea of Lovely being a place the bride can totally girl out before she takes that next step. We also have a touch of vintage rustic in there, to take some of the sweetness off the top. As for our dress aesthetic…we cater to so many looks: romantic, classic, glam. No two brides are alike so it’s important to have a curated mix of dresses and accessories to personalize each bride’s look.

How does your studio style convey your professional aesthetic? Finding a dress should be a blast, so the whimsy in our store carries over to our sales approach. Relax, have a good time, giggle lots, and find the most amazing dress!

Favorite part of your studio? By far our ‘trying on salons’. Each brides gets a private room with a ginormous mirror and ample seating. It makes for such a lovely experience. Our favorite part will probably be our garden once we are finished with the landscaping and can have back yard parties!

Where do you go for inspiration? BLOGS! A lot of our décor elements were adopted from someone’s wedding or design décor. We are going to change them up with the seasons, which makes for fun projects for our employees, and down the road, fun workshops in our space for brides and industry folks.

What tool do you use in your business that you can’t live without? Our iPad is pretty amazing. We had it with us at the Cynthia Rowley bridesmaid launch event, which took place in Cynthia’s store, and we took appointments remotely.

Is there anything you’d upgrade to? We could use another floor! We need more space to accommodate our wait list.

Anything else we should know? Well we have one little secret…we are helping a good friend from the bridal industry launch a new line so we are super excited about that. Make sure you check out our blog before October market and we’ll be revealing all of the Juicy details!

What do you do? Custom Event Styling: social, corporate, not-for-profit and destinations

What is your aesthetic? We try desperately to remember for whom we are designing, so I guess we hope that our aesthetic is that of our client – with some occasional gentle judicious guidance, of course…

How does your studio style convey your professional aesthetic? I like it because it is all over the place, just like our clients. I have decorated it, hopefully, so that there is an element that every person who comes in can find something visually that makes them comfortable. There are clean, hard lines, no color areas, colorful areas, modern touches and oriental rugs to soften.

Favorite part of your studio? Number one – we have wide open space! But I do love the way the sunlight plays on Vivian’s (our studio cat) fur through the glass bricks. We didn’t have full sun in our last studio.

Where do you go for inspiration? We live in New York – I walk down the street and always see something new and wonderful every time.

What tool do you use in your business that you can’t live without? Wide open communication.

Is there anything you’d upgrade to? If I could find a way to plug my imagination into an imaging device so that clients could see the way I envision their events, our sales would be through the roof. But when it comes to gadgets, bring on the newest and the best – they make me very happy.

Anything else we should know? I have the great fortune of being blessed with a garden on my rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen. I have trees, about twenty five different herbs, decorative plants and, this year, nine different varieties of heirloom tomatoes that I grow in Earth Boxes. Until we get a formal link, you can visit them on my New York City Tomato Cam. View it at http://beahm.viewnetcam.com:50000/CgiStart Click “Single” to bring up the cam.